EDGE OF DAY

CHAPTER SEVEN

Ed drove, checking the rear-view mirror every three seconds like he was expecting company. She preferred new Ed. Probably because they'd both stopped trying to be nice to each other. It was a relief not to have to struggle on in a terminally ill relationship, obliged to keep going until it died and released her.

"So why did I need to disappear?" she asked as it became obvious Ed wasn't about to volunteer information. He ignored her. Perhaps driving took enormous amounts of concentration. She'd never been in a car driven by a human before. Correction: not as far as she remembered. For all she knew she could drive a car herself.

Maybe Ed would be more cooperative if she started with something simpler. "Is my real name Day White?"

"Monday Hollis."

"My name is Monday Hollis?"

"Take it up with your parents."

Her throat grew dry and swallowing uncomfortable. "My parents... They didn't really die in an accident?"

"Look," he said, "I don't know the ins and outs, okay? As far as I was told, mostly everything you remember up until your nineteenth birthday really happened."

"And who told you?"

"You did. When you recruited me." She sat forward, bit her lip, and folded her arms. Monday Hollis must have been desperate if she'd chosen Ed. Sure, he was fantastic to look at, but there was something about him that made her edgy, even now. Maybe it was just the effect of the last three weeks and the fact that deep down a part of her must have known everything he did was a lie.

"So what happens now?" she asked. His eyes landed on the rear-view mirror. He hit the accelerator and veered off the magnetic levitation track. They bumped on to old tarmac. The car rumbled along like it had no suspension.

Day whipped her head around to take in the problem. A black van with tinted windows careened off the Maglev track after them.

Ed pushed down on the acceleration pedal and they skidded around a tight bend in the road.

"Driver," the car said. "You have broken three safety codes in the last minute. I regretfully inform you that I am currently reporting these violations to the police."

The seatbelt tightened around Day's chest so that her back pressed into the polyester and the lacerations burned. The heart rate and oxygen levels on her monitor moved into the red emergency zones. An oxygen mask popped out above her head. Her wrist monitor was interacting with the intelligent zone of the car.

"Who is it?" she panted.

"How about letting a man concentrate?"

The van caught up and thrust hard into their left side. The whole side of the lightweight bubble car crumpled inwards. Day held the oxygen mask to her face and sucked in deeply.

Her head cleared, and she remembered the black van she'd seen on the way back from Janus after her messed-up implant. Could these be the same people? And if they were, had something really happened on the way back from the shopping mall? Why would Gavin, her droid chauffer, have lied about it?

Ed had the accelerator pedal flat on the car floor. The lightweight carbon pod was going so fast it practically hovered like the Floats on the main Maglev highways. Ed wove between the legs of a railway bridge. The vehicle's speed meter was off the dial.

"You're going to blow the engine!" Day shouted, checking behind. The black van couldn't keep up. They were making good headway.

A whip-like crack boomed through the air. Day had never heard the sound of gunshot, at least not in the first nineteen years of her life that she actually remembered, but instinctively she knew what she'd just heard.